On the 27th December
1927, the musical Show Boat opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway.
Show Boat a musical in two acts, with music by Jerome Kern and book and
lyrics by Oscar
Hammerstein II. Based on Edna Ferber's bestselling novel of the same name,
the musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands, and dock workers
on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over a span of
nearly fifty years, from 1880 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and
tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River",
"Make Believe",
and "Can't Help
Lovin' Dat Man".
The arrival of Show Boat
on Broadway
was a watershed moment in the history of American musicals. Compared to the
trivial and unrealistic operettas,
light musical comedies,
and "Follies"-type musical revues that defined
Broadway in the 1890s and early 20th century, Show Boat "was a
radical departure in musical storytelling, marrying spectacle with seriousness."
According to The Complete Book of Light Opera:
"Here we come to a completely new genre – the musical play as
distinguished from musical comedy. Now... the play was the thing, and
everything else was subservient to that play. Now... came complete integration
of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic
entity."
The quality of the musical was
recognized immediately by the critics, and Show Boat is frequently
revived. Awards for Broadway shows did not exist in 1927 when the original
production of the show premiered, nor in 1932, when its first revival was staged,
but recent revivals of Show Boat have won both the Tony Award
for Best Revival of a Musical (1995) and the Laurence
Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival (1991)
Here a a couple of clips from the 1936 film:
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